NPA suspends Sentuo Oil Refinery’s approval to sell specific finished fuel products – Report

The National Petroleum Authority (NPA) has suspended the approval granted to Sentuo Oil Refinery to sell specific finished fuel products on the market.

According to a Joy Business report, the move by the regulator follows investigations it carried out which determined that the Chinese-owned refinery was selling finished petroleum products particularly petrol at a slightly higher price than what was originally approved by the NPA.

Head of Quality Control at the NPA, Ubeidalah Saeed explained that the action was taken after some industry players [IES and COPEC] disputed that Sentuo Oil was not meeting the required industry specifications set by the regulator.

Ubeidalah Saeed on his part dismissed claims that the finished fuel products sold on the market from Sentuo Oil could be described as unwholesome products.

Per the report, energy think-tanks consisting of the Institute of Energy Security (IES) and Chamber of Petroleum Consumers (COPEC) raised concerns about the development and accused the NPA of granting Sentuo Oil Refinery the approval to sell these specific finished fuel products which were said to be causing damage to consumers engines.

On January 26, 2024, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo commissioned Ghana’s first private oil refinery built by the Sentuo Group, a Chinese conglomerate located in the Tema Industrial Area.

The refinery is a US$2 billion investment made by the Chinese with the view of processing petroleum products with a capacity of 40,000 barrels per day, scalable to 100,000 barrels when the facility is fully operational.